On the screens of Amazon Prime Video and Canal+, the football offer is back in force

AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, CANAL+ – SATURDAY AUGUST 6 AT 5 P.M. – FOOTBALL

For the amateur football viewer, passion has a price: that of the compulsory subscription to a paid channel or platform. Or rather several. Whether it’s the French Ligue 1 (Amazon Prime Video, Canal+), foreign championships, such as the German Bundesliga, the Spanish Liga, the Italian Serie A (BeIN Sports), the English Premier League (Canal+) or European Cups (Canal+, BeIN Sports, RMC Sport), you have to checkout.

Only the meetings of the French team (TF1, M6) remain visible free of charge. Not forgetting one Ligue 2 match per day, thanks to La Chaîne L’Equipe. A free channel which offered, for the 2021-2022 season, a much appreciated Ligue 2 multiplex, but which the Amazon Prime Video pay platform recovered this season, thus further limiting the free football offer.

After more than two months of absence, Ligue 1 is therefore resuming its place on the screens, with 80% of the matches scheduled on Amazon Prime Video (annual Amazon Prime subscription at 69 euros + Ligue 1 Pass at 99 euros per year) and two meetings per day offered on the Canal+ group channels. Since its birth in November 1984, Canal+ was, in fact, the “historic” partner of the French championship. But that was before. With the arrival on the French market of Amazon Prime Video, the situation has changed.

Major loss leader

Canal+’s now limited offer concerning Ligue 1 (one match on Saturday evening, another Sunday at 5 p.m.) does not mean that the group has withdrawn from the most popular sport, which is also attractive in terms of expensive hearings regarding broadcast rights. At the end of June, Maxime Saada, boss of Canal +, announced that he had acquired all the rights to the three European competitions (Champions League, Europa League, Europa League Conference), for the period 2024-2027. An operation estimated at around 480 million euros.

The Ligue 1 soap opera, presented for years as the major loss leader for Canal+, has therefore been replaced by the Champions League soap opera. A strategy which can be explained by the high audiences recorded last season, during European evenings (1.6 million viewers on average) while Ligue 1 only attracted 553,000 faithful on average. “The Champions League is the quintessence of our strategy : offer the best of each discipline, summarizes Maxime Saada. This competition also comes first in the satisfaction of our subscribers and as a motivation to subscribe with commitment. » An argument that will probably not prevent Canal + from presenting, in a few months, a new offer for the rights to Ligue 1 for the period 2024-2028.

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